EUtopias and Other Futures: A European Journal of Science Fiction

By Péter MARTON ** Join the  European Science Fiction group  on Facebook for related discussions. ** In this new format, I will post one-paragraph/one-sentence briefs on books and short stories of interest, saving you (as well as for myself) a lot of time even as I hope to still be able to give you enough information to make up your mind as to whether you're interested in the given story. It might be useful to add that I very much remain interested in writing longer reviews of anthologies and novels, too -- this is just an additional trick to pull from the bag to keep things going and keep you posted. First up in Briefings on Readings is Celle qui n'avait pas peur de Cthulhu  (The One Who Wasn't Afraid of Cthulhu) by Karim Berrouka : At times light entertainment, mixing comedy and action, at times lightly philosophical, this book gives you a mildly critical take on the body of work by Lovecraft (and also about religion) and takes you on a ride through the wor...

The movie By Péter MARTON ** Join the  European Science Fiction group  on Facebook for related discussions. ** Having recently seen Ant-Man (2015, directed by Peyton Reed), I turned to the internet to find out if Bernard Werber, author of the 1991 novel Les fourmis (and the larger La saga des fourmis ), had anything to say about the movie. For me, ants in SF equal Werber's work to start with. It is a mandatory reference point to have in any conversation. And it is so for some in France, too. As I found out, this means on the one hand that he was invited to offer a critical review of the film as well as interviewed about it. On the other hand, this doesn't mean much more than that... Below, an excerpt  from the interview to explain this. This comes after Werber reveals how his work has gone on to inspire some in France who sold the idea to the US where a producer took it from one studio to the other... so Werber was completely forgotten by everyone involv...

Le Quartier Haussmannien dans la "brune", as French commentators sometimes joke about the movie... By Cseperke TIKÁSZ ** Join the  European Science Fiction group  on Facebook for related discussions. ** The key to a good disaster movie may be how the creators combine the bigger picture with the micro perspective of characters we can care about. Think Kate and Jack in Titanic. In this French SF movie, Just a breath away ( Dans la brume - 2018 ), we have a micro/family drama but we do not get anything like the bigger picture. We are left without answers as to the basic whys of the story. After a sudden earthquake, Paris is covered by a murderous smoke. Everyone envoloped by this mysterious smoke, breathing it in, is dead in seconds, but it stops somewhere between the 4th and 5th floor level and only very-very slowly continues to rise. So there remain survivors. One of them is the character played by Romain Duris (you might know the guy from The Spanish Apartment/L...

Collage by yours truly: Portraits of Vladislav Surkov (top left and top right) + a portrait of Natan Dubovitsky (top middle) + screenshot of the source of the latter portrait, with the intro to Dubovitsky's short story By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** A friend sent along the link to this short story , titled "Without Sky" or Без неба in Russian. The author is indicated as Natan Dubovitsky -- a pseudonym. Keep this in mind for now. The Wikipedia page on none other than Vladislav Surkov says that "journalists in Russia and abroad have speculated that Surkov writes under the pseudonym Natan Dubovitsky, although the Kremlin denies it." If I look at the above collage, with two of Surkov's publicly available portraits and the drawn portrait of Natan Dubovitsky (from the site where the short story in question was published), I probably don't need a forensic investigation of the st...

By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** Snowpiercer is a 2013 movie directed by Bong Joon Ho of South Korea. It is relevant for EUtopias and Other Futures because it is often referred to as SF due to its premise, and because it also has key European connections and elements. The premise is that humanity had reached a point where climate engineering had to be tried, which then badly backfired. "Backfroze" may be a better word as a new ice age was brought about. There are survivors to be found on a very long train that is powered by a perpetum mobile (perpetual motion) engine and is going eternally in circles, clearing the track ahead of snow, extracting water in the process, and so on. It functions as a near-closed ecological system. Still from the comic (the English-language edition)... European connections include that the film was loosely (as in real loooooosely) based on Le Transpercen...

Nordine and Nouria Ramadani, a couple with children, are the family to move into the world's first 3D-printed home in Nantes, France (pictured above: a snapshot of the construction process, from the video referenced below). This is happening as part of a social housing project, in collaboration between the city council, a housing association and the University of Nantes, in a relatively deprived northern area of town. Besides housing, it is also an aim of the project to create a more vivid environment with curvy walls (made up of cement poured in-between polyurethane insulator layers). This structure may give increased thermal resistance to the house, and reduce humidity inside. Here's a longer article about this, and here's a video as well.